Living Politics: Book Launch

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An Exhibition of Photographs from the Australian Research Council Laureate Project “Informal Life Politics in the Remaking of Northeast Asia: From Cold War to Post-Cold War”

As major political changes reshape the East Asia, groups of ordinary people across the region have been developing alternative, self-help ways to address the profound social, economic and environmental challenges they face. These problems include resource depletion, unsustainable agricultural practices, ecological damage from radiation and other environmental pollutants, lack of access to clean drinking water, problems caused by large-scale population movements and lack of welfare support for vulnerable sections of the population.

For the past five years, a group of researchers at the Australian National University, supported by the Australian Research Council Laureate scheme, have been tracking some of these alternative experiments in “living politics” through which people in China, Japan, the two Koreas, Mongolia and Taiwan are tackling these problems.

This exhibition is a collection of images which the researchers have brought back from their fieldwork. They convey the richness and complexity of grassroots living politics in the region, the difficulties faced by living politics networks and communities, and the creativity with which they are responding to those difficulties.